SIMBAD references

Massive metal-poor stars might form massive stellar black holes (BHs), with mass 25 ≤ m_BH/M_☉≤ 80, via direct collapse. We derive the number of massive BHs (N_BH) that are expected to form per galaxy through this mechanism. Such massive BHs might power most of the observed ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs). We select a sample of 64 galaxies with X-ray coverage, measurements of the star formation rate (SFR) and of the metallicity. We find that N_BH correlates with the number of observed ULXs per galaxy (N_ULX) in this sample. We discuss the dependence of our model on the SFR and on the metallicity. The SFR is found to be crucial, consistently with previous studies. The metallicity plays a role in our model, since a lower metallicity enhances the formation of massive BHs. Consistently with our model, the data indicate that there might be an anticorrelation between N_ULX, normalized to the SFR, and the metallicity. A larger and more homogeneous sample of metallicity measurements is required, in order to confirm our results.